For air travel The Bose are fine, all of the noise canceling head phones are ideal at canceling out a specific frequency, like the continuous frequency of a jet engine. Michael, the Bose are REALLY comfortable...

However, for my application.. In an office, noise canceling head phones are not great, this is due to the fact that they are not good at rapid frequency chances, like random people talking ect, ect. I just wasn't a big fan of how they sounded... One of those preference things i guess...

I would say buy a pair of those Bose from a company with a good return policy, and try them... You may like them, i thought that they were "ok", but i wanted more performance if possible, due to my specific situation.

I found this site, they have several reviews. Buying headphones turned out to be a bit more of an undertaking than i thought... i should have figured as much though, considering it's an audio product...http://www.innerfidelity.com/

In October of this year I had a road test of their 990's,. Although they did not send my Senn HD555 totally crashing to the floor they did in fact out class them to the point where I didn't want to see them go. 990's are well built and comfortable as a broken in, 5-year old, eider down pillow. Musically, very neuetral with a rich and lusterous presentation. Bass response best I've heard which you usually don't get when other parts of the freq do well. That $$$ compromise we always see.

Bottom line, these are highly recommended and well within your budget as I see it. One caveat, with the 600 Ohm you'll need a descent headphone amp, the 32 Ohm version not so much.

Rich, i thought about a pair of Beyerdynamic’s. I called HeadRoom and talked to a guy on the phone for about a half hour. As we were talking and he was getting the over all picture, he said that the Beyerdynamic’s would not be as ideal as a closed headphone, due to the lack of noise isolation. This is part of what killed the Grado idea as well, in addition to the overall lack of build quality.

What are your thoughts of using Beyerdynamic’s in an office environment?

The 880s are semi-open. When I'm wearing them, but not playing anything I can hear pretty well (a little muffled, and but when music is playing just about all surrounding sound disappears) I had a friend wear them next to me, and I couldn't hear more than a whisper of what was being played. More than a few feet away, no one would notice, unless you had them really cranked.

Rich, i thought about a pair of Beyerdynamic’s. I called HeadRoom and talked to a guy on the phone for about a half hour. As we were talking and he was getting the over all picture, he said that the Beyerdynamic’s would not be as ideal as a closed headphone, due to the lack of noise isolation. This is part of what killed the Grado idea as well, in addition to the overall lack of build quality.

What are your thoughts of using Beyerdynamic’s in an office environment?

The 990's are an open design. So an office environment could work as long as you don't have other people around you that may get irritated from the din.

I will be using my tivoli model 1 radio to power said head phones.. If i need to get a headphone amp, then i may get one...

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Speaking of Tivoli, I was just on their web site and saw they have improved their existing models now with bluetooth connectivity. However they have also introduced a noise cancelling headphone - see hereI think they look pretty cool with the real wood finish. What do you think about the claims "Real wood housings provide a more natural sound" I like Tivoli in general, so am interested in hearing these. has anybody tried them?